We arrived at the third hole, a par three. Lee punched a good shot toward and over the green. Tobler whooped and slapped him five, then stuck his tee into the ground.
“Anything else that’s out there you know of that could cause cancer?” I asked.
Yount thought. “There’s been some work done with autologous fibroblast transplants, but the science isn’t there yet. It’s all research stage.”
Autologous fibroblast transplantation is a process whereby fibroblasts—the building blocks of skin—are harvested from a patient, grown in culture, then reintroduced into the body.
“And,” Yount continued, “I really can’t see the transplants causing cancer. The cells would either take hold or they wouldn’t. And the trouble the researchers are having is that the cells are not taking hold and not growing in the body. The response just isn’t that robust. I haven’t heard anything about tumors.” He unsheathed a six-iron. “This is my favorite hole. I actually parred it once.”
Parred it once, but not twice. Yount’s ball ricocheted off a tree back toward the tee box. It lodged in an old divot fifteen feet in front of us. “Damn,” he said.
After we finished the hole—I’d actually parred it, and basked for a moment, at least, in the envy of my fellows—Yount turned to me. “Nate, have to say your questions are making me nervous. This is my livelihood. So if you know something about these things, I’d hope you’d clue me in.”
I told him about the cases of fibrosarcoma, about the women’s images.
Looking grave, he removed his driver from the bag. “I haven’t heard anything. No reports of illegitimate treatments causing problems, definitely no reports of legitimate treatments doing this.”
Lee and Tobler began heckling Yount to take his shot, but he ignored them. “I’ll keep my eye out. And you let me know if there’s anything I need to worry about.”
I told him I would.
He gazed out over the fairway for hole four. “You got to find out what’s going on, Nate. Not just for me, I mean it’s just a job, after all. But what you described to me …”—he shook his head—“nobody should have to suffer that.”
Fire and tobacco and a double bogey on the fifth hole. Tobler, the venture capitalist, reached into his bag and produced four squat, dark Maduros. With the beer, my admirable skill on the links, and now the good cigars, I felt some of the coils in my body unwind. As the pungent smoke curled and dispersed, I decided that I liked these men. I liked that they liked me. I enjoyed their admiration, even for something as inconsequential and dubious as my golf ability. There was even talk about booting the lawyer Ted from the foursome permanently.
I took a drag on the cigar and blew a cloud. Had I followed a different path, this could have been my life: playing hooky with buddies on a weekday afternoon, chatting about practice management and marital strife. Somehow, though, as good as the cigar tasted, as good as the conversation flowed, and as good as the clubs felt in my hands, I couldn’t shake the sense that these were moments in someone else’s life.
I pulled off the driver’s head cover at the ninth hole, Lee telling me he’d give me twenty bucks for a par on this one. Before I could accept the bet, I felt the cell vibrate in my pocket.
I told Yount to go ahead, and answered the call.
“Dr. McCormick?” It was a woman’s voice, slightly muffled.
I said it was.
“This is Dorothy Zhang. I believe you were trying to get in touch with me.”
69
I WAS TO MEET DOROTHY Zhang in Berkeley, at an address she’d given me. I was not to tell the police. If I see the police, she’d warned, you will not see me. But I trust you not to bring them.
“Why do you trust me?” I’d asked.
You were Paul’s friend, she’d answered simply.
Dredging up some memory of Berkeley’s geography, I got off on Ashby Avenue. The bad guys knew my car—I was pretty sure of that—but I didn’t have time to switch vehicles. Next best thing, I figured, was to lose them in the middle of a college campus in full academic swing.
Ashby took me up to Telegraph, a stone’s throw from People’s Park, haven for homelessness and drug addiction, and subject of enough sociology and public health theses to fill a library. Part of the city’s charm—the People’s Republic of Berkeley, for those who remember its halcyon rebellious days—was its embrace of those not even on the first rung of the socioeconomic ladder. Restaurants would leave leftover food in the park; the bourgeoisie from the Berkeley Hills would leave leftover clothes. Sort of like giving to Goodwill, minus the tax write-offs.
On Telegraph, I passed some of the more exotic members of the species. A kid with a tattoo—a thornbush crawling up his cheeks and across his forehead—sauntered in front of my car. A goth couple, swathed in black and adorned with various skeletal accessories, walked hand in hand, stopping to take in the display at Amoeba Music. Well, I thought, if Dorothy Zhang comes at me with a bazooka, I could sprint down to Telegraph, don a rasta hat, pierce my eyelid, and just fade into the crowd.
After covering every square inch of asphalt around the Berkeley campus, after nearly mowing down a few coeds who were dumb enough to cross the street while I concentrated on signage, I finally found the address I’d been hunting. It was a light green building, maybe ten units total, on a small street near the campus. No idea why Dorothy Zhang would be here and not with her baby-Einstein kid Tim in Napa. No idea why she’d dump him on a guy who denied the kid’s name. Unless she was masterminding murder and mayhem across the Bay Area. You don’t want your offspring to see something like that.
I parked across from the apartment, shot looks up and down the block before I got up the courage to pull my sport coat from the back-seat and step out.
Clean, with two floors of apartments surrounding a small courtyard, Dorothy Zhang’s building looked more like a motel than a permanent residence. Not charming, but not a hovel. I stepped along the open walkway on the second floor to the far end of the complex. Number 8.
Standing to the side of the peephole, I knocked.
No one answered, and I knocked again. Again, nothing.
I tried the doorknob, turning it easily. The door swung open.
I stepped inside.
70
“MS. ZHANG?”
The sparsely furnished studio apartment—futon, wooden table, one chair—was wrecked. The futon mattress had been sliced open. Clothes had been ripped and tossed. The carpeting was torn from the baseboards and pulled up in places, as if the floor itself had been flayed.
A video camera lay on the floor, its inner workings bursting forth like intestines.
I walked past a closet, where the few clothes from inside had been spread over the floor. Its ceiling had been punched in. In the bathroom, pill bottles were emptied into the sink. Shampoo and conditioner spattered the shower floor.
I checked out the pill bottles. Vicodin, OxyContin. The pills were dissolving on the basin’s damp porcelain.
The kitchen had fared no better. The refrigerator and freezer were wide open, the contents—peanut butter, couscous, ice cream—smeared on the counter. Beside them, Chinese food cartons spilled their gelatinous insides into the melting ice cream.
There was a back door, leading to a back staircase. The lock was shattered.
I was struck, at that moment, not just by the ransacking, but by how spartan the place was, under the broken furniture and scattered foodstuffs. Not a touch of personality here. Except…
On the kitchen linoleum, there was a photograph: sky-blue background, little boy whose hair had been wet with water to tame it for the shot.
Timothy Kim.
I reached down to grab the picture when I felt my phone vibrate; I answered it.
“Get out,” a female voice snarled. “Now.”
“Who—”
But a sound cut my words. It was the door at the front of the apartment. Then hushed voices.
I ran like hell for the back door.
&nbs
p; 71
I BOLTED DOWN THE BACK staircase to the patch of grass that passed as a yard. There was a shout above me, a fence in front of me. I clambered over five feet of wood and dropped into the next yard, snapping the necks of some birds-of-paradise. Without looking back, I tore across the yard, to a shorter fence, scrambled over it.
I could hear voices, excited now.
I cut left through the yard, to an alleyway. Over another fence, through another domestic haven, to a street. And then I ran, ran, ran. Four years of high school cross-country finally turned out to be worth something.
When I hit the campus, I got as far into it as I could. Eventually, I stopped and slumped over, hands on my knees. I was heaving pretty good now, sucking air deep into my lungs. Bile flooded my mouth and I spit onto the grass.
If you’re going to try to get lost, a campus is a pretty good place to do it. Especially a university as stuffed to the gills as Berkeley is. I scanned the grounds, but didn’t see anybody hell-bent on putting a bullet into my brain. Still, I was feeling too exposed here, so I walked quickly to the nearest building—some Earth Sciences hall—and slumped down on a bench inside. Classes had changed a few minutes before, and the halls were full of youth and vigor.
But my youth and vigor peaked during those cross-country days, and it took two more minutes for the pounding in my ears to stop. When it did, I began to process the Dorothy Zhang grist.
I’d very nearly found her, and she’d vanished. Again.
The cell vibrated.
“Dr. McCormick?” Same female voice.
“Ms. Zhang,” I said.
I hunched over the phone like I was protecting something, which, when you get right down to it, I guess I was.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Where are you?”
“At Berkeley. On campus. I was in your apartment.”
“And that’s precisely why I told you to get out.”
It was hard to miss the edge in her voice.
“We need to meet,” I said.
She laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“Who else did you tell about the address? Who did you tell where I was?” she spat.
“No one.”
“I’ve been at that apartment for over a month, Dr. McCormick. Two hours ago, I tell you where I am and…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“I told absolutely no one about you. Not the police. No one.” I felt Dorothy Zhang slipping from my grasp. “I didn’t tell anybody. I don’t—These people have been after me, too. There was a couple killed last night and they removed their goddamned tongues and left me one as a message. Call the San Francisco police, ask them.”
She was silent.
“I know about the sick people,” I told her. “I found the pictures Paul Murphy had. Paul wanted to show them to me.” I felt myself getting heated. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”
She didn’t answer that. Instead, she asked me, “Do you know where the Greek Theater is?”
My memory of the campus had rusted over the years. I had to ask directions three times. Each of the students I stopped wore flip-flops. Each had a breezy air about her, a sun-fueled California cheeriness. What a stranger I was, what a strange land.
I hoofed it across campus, past an open swath of grass with kids sunning, studying, talking Kant and Jessica Simpson. Enjoy life, kids, I thought. Worry about grades and who hooked up with whom while you can. The world gets dark, dark, dark after you grab that diploma.
I cut between the Hearst Mining Building and the so-called Mining Circle, a reflecting pool with a few furry bushes rising from its center. At the business school, I wove my way to the Greek Theater.
A few cars gathered dust on an asphalt lot shaded by eucalyptus. One—an ugly Chevy Malibu parked at the top of the sloping lot—was occupied. As I approached it, the driver pushed open the passenger-side door. It was a woman in a big white hat, large dark sunglasses on her face. She wore stylish blue jeans, a tight olive turtleneck sweater. A faint scent of perfume wafted from the car.
But there was something wrong—
“Get in, Dr. McCormick,” she said.
—with her face. Even under the glasses, I could see marble-sized knots of flesh on her upper cheeks and on her temples. A tumor lifted the left side of her lip. A scar ran to her right lip, across the right cheek. I let my eyes rest, perhaps a little too long, on a formerly beautiful face, now destroyed. Dorothy Zhang’s face.
“I’m glad you—”
I never finished the sentence.
I felt wetness on my face. The next thing I knew, I was clawing at eyes that felt as though they’d been burned from my head.
72
SNOT AND TEARS POURED FROM places I didn’t even know produced snot and tears. A hand, not my own, reached into my jacket and pawed around. I hardly noticed it, though, since my blood vessels had dilated and breathing had become difficult.
Between gags, I managed “What…are you…doing?”
“Just making sure,” she answered, and I felt the hand move away.
“Making sure of what? I don’t have anything.”
She didn’t answer.
“Can I at least get a tissue or something?”
She said, “I don’t have any,” so I pulled my shirttail from my pants and wiped my eyes and nose, which still flowed like the Ganges.
“Paul gave you the pictures?” she asked.
“He didn’t have the chance. He was killed before he could.”
“How did you get them?”
“I broke into his house. I found them there.”
“You found them and the police didn’t?”
“I’m a better noticer than they are.”
“Noticer,” she repeated skeptically. “Did Paul tell you to contact me?”
“No. Your name was on a file in the jump drive where I found the pictures.” I blew my nose into the shirt. Inelegant, but effective. “You have it, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The fibrosarcoma.”
“I have it, Dr. McCormick.”
“Do you know how you got it?”
“Of course.”
By this time, my shirttail was soaking wet with secretions. Still, I could not see.
“Here,” Zhang said, and I felt something soft land in my lap: a clutch of tissues. Again, I blew my nose.
“You said you didn’t have any.”
“You can’t trust anyone, can you?” She sighed, but I thought I detected a hint of amusement in it. “Tell me why I should trust you.”
“Check out my résumé. I don’t usually go in for attacking newscasters.”
“I did check it out.”
“And Paul? What did he say about me?”
“Paul said you were one of the good guys.”
“Okay, then. I’m a good guy. You just maced one of the good guys.”
I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes. Christ, I thought, this really is unpleasant. Then I remembered the fate of the others who’d gotten tangled in this mess. All in all, I had it pretty good by comparison.
“We can’t talk here,” she said.
“Okay,” I said meekly.
“But I have to be careful. I’m sorry, but I have to drive.”
“Then drive. I certainly can’t—”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“For what? Oh, no—”
Another jet of spray hit me in the face.
73
THE CAR STOPPED; THE FIERY heat in my face, the liquid dump from my eyes and mucous membranes, did not. Apart from light and dark, I still couldn’t see much. I heard the driver’s-side door open, then close. The door at my elbow opened.
Pepper spray, oleoresin capsaicin. The cayenne pepper derivative is an inflammatory agent, not an irritant, which is why it opened the pipes in my face so wide. But to say it’s not an irritant doesn’t mean there’s no pain. The fucker hurt.
“You didn’t have to hit me twic
e,” I whined. “That stuff lasts for thirty minutes.”
“I didn’t read the directions,” she said. “Here, I have your arm.” Fingers wrapped around my biceps, hoisted me out of the vehicle. “Fresh air should help.”
Fresh air, for those who haven’t had the opportunity to get a snootful of pepper spray, does not help.
“You’re not going to push me off a cliff or something?” I asked.
“No.” Dorothy Zhang led me by the elbow across what felt like broken bones.
“On second thought, do push me off a cliff. Put me out of my misery.”
“Here,” she said, handing me a bottle. “Wash out your eyes with this.”
“Water won’t help. You have any hand lotion? Anything greasy?”
Her hand dropped from my arm, and I think she had reached inside her purse. A moment later, she said, “Here.” She pushed a tube into my hand. “Hand lotion.”
I squeezed what was left of the tube into my hand and rubbed it over my face. I wiped my face on my shirt.
“Now the water,” I said.
By the time I was done with my ablutions, the fire in my face dampened, and my vision cleared somewhat. I could just make out her form—tall and thin—with the floppy white hat slanted over her face. She looked like a tulip.
Water ran down my front. I used my shirt again. Blew my nose.
I thought I heard a giggle.
“I’m glad this is so much fun for you,” I said.
“It’s just—” She tried to get out more words but stopped herself because she was laughing. Laughing. “You just look…You don’t look happy.”
“My entire front is soaked with personal effluvia, as well as a couple ounces of hand lotion and half a liter of water. Wonder how happy you’d be under the circumstances,” I grumbled. “Where are we?” I could see that I was standing on the edge of a white expanse, with masses of color smudged across. Beyond, I could see green and brown. Above me, blue.
Flawless Page 24
